Convergence
by viicious
Summary: Kadaj seeks revenge through a slightly different approach.
1. Second Advent

For a long time, there was nothing but abyss, quiet, and darkness abound.

But he felt them coming, and something didn't feel fair or right or just. The miasma of the Lifestream spoke of such knowledges as these and told him this was all wrong, this was just a lie. These whispers, so cruel but true, hinted at a revolution, a redoing, a second chance at the success once lost.

His will was done; he was part of the Lifestream no more.

* * *

Cloud Strife opened his eyes. Those Mako blues etched into the face of remorse scanned the horizon where Midgar once stood and Edge now rose from its demise, like a phoenix from flames. He was standing right where Zack had died but didn't know it. If one death on his shoulders wasn't enough to crush his spirit, two was, and he gently placed his hand on the hilt of the old, rusted Buster Sword that used to be his comrade's.

That terrible day was so extremely vague and drawn-out. It was a dreadful existence, to be dead in the mind yet see what is happening, the will of the hero that saved him still not enough to stop their pursuants. He shut his eyes tight, trying to remember Zack's face as he was gunned down near the collapsed Cloud. But everything that turned up was mere murkiness and shadows. His brows unfurrowed as he opened his eyes again.

His thoughts dwindled to regret, and by the time he was tired of standing still for so long, the ever-so-slight sound of a footstep caught his attention. He felt malice; not a psyche, but rather, that the physical waves of evil were touching his firm, fair skin. He slowly went to reach for his weapon, pretending to scratch his scapula, and an all-too-familiar voice called firmly, but softly.

"Don't."

He knew the voice, and images of those three replicas filled his mind with dread, picturing the many faces of Sephiroth as he had done battle with him too many times to count or avidly recall. _How?_ was all his mind could think as it raced to find an answer and a solution to his new and somewhat shocking dilemma. He wanted to turn, face his enemy, but somehow he knew, simply knew, that he would not kill Cloud just yet. He dropped his hand and looked on toward the Buster Sword facing the wasteland before him.

"Kadaj."

"You seem so surprised," mocked Kadaj, and Cloud slowly turned his head over his shoulder to see his enemy. He looked different, and Cloud catalogued this new trick by JENOVA in his memories of deception he endured through the virus alone. From his peripheral vision, he saw the shine of the blade that was pointed directly at him. He saw Kadaj's cheeky little smile cut his boyish face and Cloud slowly turned to face him. Kadaj's smug face upturned in triumph to see Cloud's expressions stern and serious as always. He almost laughed.

"How are you here?" Cloud's question came in near bemoaning.

Kadaj's eyes tightened with glee.

"That's my secret."

Cloud had been right Kadaj appeared different. He still seemed small and fierce, but his leather waste had changed, making him appear taller. His hair seemed to have grown and eyes seemed brighter and more cat-like. The blade was the same. Cloud questioned the reality of this event, but the more he watched that similar enemy grin in delight, the more he realised Kadaj had somehow conquered death if he had been alive to begin with. Which begged the question: why had Kadaj changed? And moreover, Cloud's first question: why was he here?

"Listen, Brother," Kadaj said, seeming almost pleasant as he dropped his arm holding his blade, "I don't want to harm you. I just want the Reunion."

"The Reunion is _over_," Cloud said fiercely, his hand itching to grab his weapon.

Kadaj's smile grew.

"No," he told Cloud, shaking his head softly, "Now that Sephiroth is out of the way, this Reunion _will_ commence."

Cloud grew angry, and swung at Kadaj, unsheathing his sword and landing a blow onto Kadaj's parry. Kadaj giggled a quick laugh, and pushed Cloud away. Cloud slid next to Zack's Buster Sword, the dirt puffing up from his movement.

"I want that boy," Kadaj said seriously, holding up his blade.

"Boy?" Cloud feigned ignorance.

"You call him Denzel."

Cloud said nothing as he attacked Kadaj again. Kadaj parried his attacks, swinging, moving left and right, and all around. He spun backward and jumped forward again, pressing his blade onto Cloud's sword. Cloud spun his sword over his head, blue, wispy trails softly gliding from it, but Kadaj knew better this time: he prompty stabbed Cloud messily through his side. In shock, Cloud ceased his movement, and rather speedily, Kadaj rammed him over the edge of the cliff on which Zack's grave sat. Unpinned from Kadaj's blade, Cloud rolled violently down toward the wasteland, blooding weakly trailing around his wound and clothes.

Kadaj only smiled triumphantly, and forcefully kicked the Buster Sword from its place to follow Cloud. Then he promptly disappeared.

* * *

Cloud didn't want to say anything to Tifa. So he told Barrett instead.

"Damn, fool! They're back!?"

Cloud solomnly nodded. They were in the Seventh Heaven bar, while Tifa and Marlene went shopping. Cloud wasn't so sure where Denzel was, but he was worried. If Kadaj had intent on his threat, which seemed likely, then Denzel being out and about was a dangerous thing. Cloud didn't appear nervous, but his mind was on the perverse encounter with the silver-haired threat.

"I'm not sure what he wants Denzel for, though," Cloud lied, assuming all well that Kadaj's old plan was probably the same as his new plan: using the children as bait to try and get JENOVA out of him. Of course, just like last time, he didn't know where JENOVA was. No one knew.

Rufus ShinRa had, for a long time after the fateful day Sephiroth arose, kept himself and rebuilding ShinRa, Inc. very busy. For a short while, Reno, sometimes Elena, would visit the bar and check up... but they no longer did that, either. He wondered if it was wise to inform Rufus. But then, as Barret's gun-arm rose into the air in faux murdering, he decided it was better to keep silent about it at least until Kadaj actually made a move, if he ever did.

"Yeah, I'm gonna kill 'em all, them damn Sephiroth wanna-bes!"

"Listen, Barrett, just don't say anything about it to Tifa," Cloud chimed a bit nervously, instinctively looking around for her, "I don't want her to get worked up."

"Worked up!?" Barrett slammed his fist onto the bar's hardwood surface, "You worried about Tifa gettin' mad when there's some o' them silver freaks out there? If I was you, I'd tell ever'body about it! Jes sayin'..."

"Tell everyone about what?"

Tifa's voice came from the front door, and Marlene ran to Barrett happily, quietly. Tifa placed the groceries on the bar front and slid them to the left a bit so she could see Cloud's woeful eyes. She stared right at him, made him feel small and under a microscope. But he was silent. Blinked only once.

"Tifa," Barrett said, hoisting Marlene onto his shoulder like her used to when she was much younger, "I ain't supposed to tell ya, but Cloud here saw one of the Sephiroth wanna-bes!"

Cloud's brows shot up in surprise, then down in anger as his head and annoyance snapped to Barrett. Barrett simply shrugged, and replied, "I didn't say 'I promise,' Spikey."

"Sephiroth wanna-bes?" Tifa asked, looking to Cloud as his eyes began to stare at the glasses behind the bar's front, "... You mean... the remnants?"

Cloud looked up; she knew he meant to say "yes".

"How could that be?" she asked curiously, softly, contemplatively.

"I don't know. But it was Kadaj," Cloud said, returning his gaze to a glass that he was now fiddling with, "And he said he wants Denzel."

Before she spoke, Cloud told her, "I don't know why."

"This can't be... What about JENOVA? The Lifestream? Aerith?"

Cloud simply shrugged. Barrett rubbed his grisly chin over Marlene's face as she giggled. Tifa was worried.

* * *

A long while after Cloud's world was upturned once more, the silver-haired god had snuck around like a fugitive until he found the Forgotten Forest. It was so peaceful and serene, blue and quiet, ghostly and dire in all senses. Where once he had last convinced several infected children to drink from poisoned water, he now stood, half-submerged, trying to summon forth his other parts. JENOVA was so far dwindled now that Sephiroth arising would be impossible. But he had a completely different plan and would only work with Loz and Yazoo.

He focused for a very long time, still as a dead tree, and then he began to strain. He tightened all his muscles and shut his eyes, concentrating on something near impossible to do. It was like becoming a temporary necromancer, almost like an alchemist: reviving the dead and paying for it later.

When he began to sweat, the disease began to flow freely from his enclasped hands. The watery, puffy blue waves spilled outward like surf on rocks, and its silent wind waved his hair and whipped his leather, cooling his sweaty brow. The illness absorbed into the water and turned black, just like last time, and it bubbled sickeningly with a hissing burn. Kadaj stopped, drained, and nearly toppled back into the water. He composed himself and stared expectantly into the abysmal puddle of sludge. In only a few moments, two silver-haired beings emerged, tendrils of black smoke encasing their naked bodies in tight leather wastes. They grinned at their little brother's accomplishment, and the intial elevation in JENOVA's revenge had been achieved.

She would be so proud.


	2. Plans Made

The sandwich was delicate. Like her. The stuffing was neat. Like her. The napkin was folded and pressed. Like her. Sort of.

She was constantly placing the napkin back on the table as Cloud would drop it off the side. It was an old game, often interrupted, and thus ruined, by Barrett. Cloud got a right laugh out of it; he was showing her he didn't need her silly help, napkin or remnant. Finally, she gave up, picking up a somewhat overused feather duster and proceeded to dust the frames of the photographs that hung along the walls of the Seventh Heaven bar. But Cloud knew they were spotless: Marlene made sure of it, her tiny figure atop an unstable chair, arms outstretched to reach the highest frame border.

"Sometimes you can be quite a pain," she would softly say, and Cloud would stop playing.

His phone had rung once since the other day, and he didn't enjoy what the caller ID had said or how they'd gotten his number. But when he listened to the message the anger faded fast. Since his earlier memories became unfiltered, he'd had an automatic bias towards Tseng... because of Zack. He didn't even remember who he'd heard it from; one of Zack's buddies? Kunster? Kundel? Something like that. Told him all about how the Turks had been a more upstanding society and how Tseng had often helped the foolish Zack from problems and the darkness that was the clouded secrets of ShinRa, Inc. If he owed Zack, he figured he owed Tseng, too.

"Will I see you to-morrow?"

In his thoughts, he hadn't even realised his feet had moved him toward the exit. He turned to see her face. He could read her fast, and she him. Her face said, "I wish you would let this die" and "Please don't go killing yourself" and "Denzel would really hate if you got hurt" and "Barrett is just getting you worked up" and "You didn't even finish your lunch" and a whole mess of other things that just melded together into a single thought that had no words whatever. All he could do was nod and leave.

* * *

The tiny white shoes of Marlene Wallace scooted back, alarmed, as a beetle trespassed her little sanctuary in Aerith's church. It was strange that, before the Meteor was summoned some years ago, she had never entered this church. But she now found solace within its bright, misty, and truly empty vacancies. For several minutes when she had arrived an hour ago, she had struggled to push and pull a pew closer to the wide open hole in the floorboards of the sacred space. And he'd watched her the whole time, almost laughing.

She was no superb artist, but her sketchbook was full of colourful art of all those she loved. It now contained the flowers which Aerith seemed to love, and it was justified only by the fact that she loved them, too. She kept forgetting their name, but probably wouldn't use it anyhow to identify them; she was stuck on "Aerith's flower". Everything was hers Aerith's church, Aerith's song, Aerith's ribbon and for some reason, Cloud seemed pleased with it as much as Marlene was.

When she heard the footsteps, they sounded light and lissome. She turned, calling Denzel's name, but no one was there. When she turned back around, however, she screamed. When she realised who it was, a large portion of her fear died. But the first initial sight of him stirred something deep in her; unbridled fear, deep dread, things she couldn't put labels to as she was so young.

"Did I scare you?"

But she was silent, her eyes still a bit wide. Something was different about him than she remembered, and she instantly wondered where the other two were, if they would come up behind her and steal her away like the first time. Something was in his left hand but he held it back, and the shadows the light cast engulfed it from recognition.

"Do you remember me?"

Marlene resisted the urge to glare; of course she did. It wasn't so long ago how they'd hurt Cloud and everyone she knew. She suddenly wished Denzel or Cloud or Tifa to be near. But she had told them she'd felt creative; what a mistake it was.

"Don't talk to strangers," she replied softly. He only grinned, almost sweetly. She feared an outburst; tried to keep still. She looked around for a kind of weapon. All she could see was feeble pieces of wood and a spring, a metal helix, so many yards away. Other than that, she was defenceless. Kadaj only blinked.

"Marlene Wallace, I want you to know I never meant to hurt you," came his unprecedented response to her wary reply. Her angry eyebrows lifted a bit. A bad guy, as she saw him, feeling sorry? It was like Sephiroth showing up at Seventh Heaven and telling Cloud, "Gee, I'm sorry about all that. My bad."

What was the harm in that?

She gently placed her belongings down on the pew and stood up, dusting herself off. She looked to him and his smile faded in deceptive curiosity. She examined him up and down, slowly making her way around him in a long circle, Kadaj not moving, but following her with his eyes and small turns of the head. When she made her way back the pew she peered up to Kadaj's cat eyes, never having gotten a better look.

"Is the present for me?"

The object in Kadaj's hand had been wrapped with stark white paper, rare in Edge, and topped with a bright red bow. It was small enough to grab with one hand and was perfectly square. The tip of his mouth upturned as he looked down to it, then held it out to her with only his left hand. She felt nervous, unsure of taking a gift from an enemy. She softly chewed on her finger in thought.

"Are you chewing? You know, I hate chewers."

Marlene looked up to Kadaj sadly. He realised his error, and tried to smile it off.

"I don't want it," she said stubbornly and folded her arms. She would have normally turned away from someone who angered her, but she feared turning her back to Kadaj. Like a cat, he seemed ready to pounce at any moment, evil waiting to jump forward at the correct release.

He dropped his arm to his side, taking the gift with it. His eyes scanned the church, the light soft and dusty, shining in avid rays toward the flowery patch that, quite frankly, rather smelled. Slowly, very slowly, he knelt to the floorboards and placed the gift down, his gloved, dark fingers brushing softly against the wood and all his leather creaking lightly.

"You don't have to take it," he said sweetly, "But I don't want it, either. I'm going to leave it right here."

He then stood up and looked over Marlene one last time before briskly walking away from Marlene and Aerith's church and the empty sector of the dead Midgar. Marlene had not watched him leave, and her desire was now on the small box. Her curiosity peaked and it was almost unbearable to let it sit there unopen. She was so engulfed in temptation she had stood there for ten minutes without moving, simply thinking about what was inside. What had the enemy Kadaj given her? A sweet? A toy? A new set of colours? Perhaps even a materia? (She thought, for a brief moment, where she would hide it when Yuffie came to visit.) It was terribly tempting, but Tifa always told her to never take gifts from strangers.

And although Kadaj was indeed strange to her, she didn't think he meant to harm her. She scooped the gift up with her belongings and ran home. No one watched her this time.

* * *

The tall, thin gentleman's phone rang. He had been waiting serenely, quietly in a faraway office. The shades were drawn but the slats were open and the sun stabbed through in white fingers across the carpet and desk and his shoulder. There was no other light in the office. When the gentleman's phone rang again he picked it up to see who it was.

Viewing the name, he opened the phone and asked, "Why aren't you here yet?"

"... Because I'm trapped in an elevator, that's why," came Cloud's disgruntled voice from an elevator car stuck in between floor fifteen and sixteen.

"Sorry Cloud, I was remiss in telling you this building is the best we could do for now," he told to Cloud, "I'm coming over. Stay put." He promptly hung up.

Cloud's phone clicked, and he dejectedly spoke into the receiver.

"Where else would I go?"

Two and a half minutes later, the cab moved slowly upward as a seemingly less powerful motor pulled it, laggingly, ever skyward. The doors creaked open slowly to Tseng's somewhat tired features, and he stood aside as Cloud left the demonic trap that was the elevator. When the doors slid shut again, not touching each other by an inch, Cloud took his eyes away from it to scan the office of Tseng: very empty, save for a deep red rug and laquered mahogany desk. Tseng took no time in getting down to business and beckoned Cloud to the side of his desk as he, himself, leant against it in thought. Cloud stood for a moment, waiting. He conceded to himself that ShinRa often had trouble getting to the point of things, leading others around in circles as they cleverly dashed to their purpose and left everyone else in the dark. As per plan, Cloud thought.

"Why am I here again?" Cloud asked, his patience ending just then.

"The remnant," Tseng coolly replied.

"How did you know? Spies...?" He thought of Reeve.

Tseng chuckled, placing his thin hand on the desk. He had a small scar above his eye from the time Kadaj had tortured him and Elena.

"We're long past the point of spying, Cloud, we're strictly business now."

"That's what you said about two years ago."

"Midgar is our priority; we're too busy to care what... 'previous problems' might be doing."

Cloud shook his head, turning to look at the patterns the light was making on the floor.

"This is about keeping tabs?"

"We're not blind and he's not invisible. Do you want ShinRa's help or not?"

Cloud turned, almost surprised.

"Help?"

Tseng stood up straight, his arms to his sides in earnest, his eyes focused on Cloud.

"The president believes whatever he's planning will be easily conquered by mobilising units and simply advancing. Last time was not easy; I agree with him. If we combine efforts, it's easier to be rid of the final thorn in all our sides."

"That's all? You just want to... team up?" came Cloud's suspecting voice.

Tseng chuckled again, "It's hardly teaming up. Think of us more as... muscle."

Cloud almost smiled. At first, it seemed like that's all Rufus wanted. Now it seemed the other way around. Had Kadaj threatened them? Would he even come to this out-of-the-way place? Did Rufus simply fear a repeat performance? Cloud folded his arms, thinking. ShinRa at his disposal was like any conqueror's dream, but he was no conqueror. He was no tyrant. He was simple and honest. Wasn't that his dream in life? Didn't he always tell Tifa he was going to become a hero like Sephiroth? Or had that dream been infused upon him of Zack by Mako and JENOVA injections? Just one other reason to employ ShinRa's hand. He told himself ShinRa was only a "just in case" instance and he looked back up to Tseng, who was waiting patiently, politely.

"Sure, ShinRa. Team up."

"I'll inform the president."

"We won't be skipping off into the sunset anytime soon, will we?"

Tseng only smiled.

"Maybe we can do that when we finally win."

And Tseng unpocketed his cell phone and pressed a single button.


End file.
